owned, for she swept straight across
to them.

"Dick, you're drunk again!" she exclaimed.

"Wrong, sis," he corrected in an injured tone. "It's same drunk."

"Dick, you go to bed!"

"Now, sis--"

"You go to bed!"

The young man wavered before her commanding gaze. "Jus's you say--jus's
you say," he mumbled, and went unsteadily toward the door.

The young woman watched him out, and then turned her troubled face back
to Larry. "I'm sorry Dick behaved to you as he did."

And then before Larry could make answer, her clouded look was gone. "So
you're here at last, Mr. Brainard." She held her hand out, smiling
a smile that by some magic seemed to envelop him within an immediate
friendship.

"I'm Miss Sherwood." He noted that the slender, tapering hand had almost
a man's strength of grip. "You needn't tell me anything about yourself,"
she added, "for I already know a lot--all I need to know: about you--and
about Maggie Carlisle. You see an hour ago a messenger brought me a long
letter he'd written about you." And she nodded to the photograph Larry
was still holding.

"You--you know him?" Larry stammered.

She answered with a whimsical smile: "Yes. Isn't he a grand, foolish
old dear? He's such a roistering, bragging personage that I've named him
Benvenuto Cellini--though he's neither liar nor thief. He must have told
you what I called him."

So that explained this password of "Benvenuto Cellini"! "No, he didn't
explain anything. There was no time."

"I don't know where he is," she continued; "please don't tell me. I
don't want to know until he wants me to know."

Larry had been making a swift appraisal of her. She was perhaps thirty,
fair, with golden-brown hair held in place by a large comb of wrought
gold, with violet-blue eyes, wearing a low-cut gown of violet chiffon
velvet and dull gold shoes. Larry's instinct told him that here was a
patrician, a thoroughbred: with poise, with a knowledge of the world,
with whimsical humor, with a kindly understanding of people, with steel
in her, and with a smiling readiness for almost any situation.

"I think no one will find you--at least for the present," her pleasantly
modulated voice continued. "There are so many things I want to talk
over with you. Perhaps I can help about Maggie. I hope you don't mind
my talking about her." Larry could not imagine any one taking offense
at anything this brilliant apparition might possibly say. "But we'll put
off our talk until t